


Inverting the Cube

by 0bsidianFire



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Con Artists, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e04 Greening the Cube, Gen, Olkari (Voltron), Talking, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:42:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9830144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bsidianFire/pseuds/0bsidianFire
Summary: After Voltron has gone, Ryner has a story to get straight. Lubos doesn't mind letting her in on it.





	

Ryner waited for the Castle of Lions to disappear into a wormhole before she even though of talking to Lubos. If what the Olkari working on the super-weapon said was true, Lubos had been working a long double-cross on the Galra. The Voltron team had probably been a few unknown variables too many and Lubos and his aid had panicked. Given the blueprints she and her own Olkari had found, Ryner was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt; the super-weapon Voltron fought against had only really used two of its many systems at its disposal. Ryner would not be surprised if those were the only functions the Galra thought the weapon was capable of.

The cell Ryner approached was made out of carbon fiber polymers. Due to the Olkari's ability to manipulate metal, keeping suspects anywhere they didn't want to be was difficult at the best of times. In Lubos' case, it was harder then usual; he was a prodigy of metal engineering and he was being kept in a city made of metal. Ironically, the Galra were competent enough to make metal-free rooms to house the Olkari in and it was in one of those rooms Lubos was being kept in.

Ryner entered the cell and held back a wince at the lack of metal and gamma radiation. At least when she and her faction escaped the city the old radium mines were accessible. Lubos sat on the floor against the back wall with his cuffed hands held flat against the floor. It was the surface closest to the ground and therefore the closest surface to metal. Ryner leaned on the closed door opposite him and waited. Lubos looked back at her with a look of board anticipation and Ryner realized he had been in this position all too often; the odds of him getting uncomfortable enough to crack first were silm at best. "For someone who supposedly betrayed his entire race, there's quite a few people who want you to go back to designing weapons for them to build," she started off. "I find it telling that they're all people who worked on that super-weapon you designed."

"So, I take it you've talked to my faction," said Lubos. There was a glint of pride in his eyes.

"I did. And they had a rather interesting take on what was going on during the occupation. Particularly the part where it took the Galra several years to find you in the sanitation system, let alone get you to design something for them." Ryner thought it was also fortunate that several hundred people's stories all agreed. Otherwise she'd think someone was making something up.

"I tried."

"If the blueprints they showed me mean anything, it's that you did a lot more then try. I'd say you just about near succeeded before Votron showed up." It was true. Ryner wanted some of the digital versions printed out to hang on her wall. "That trick with the "dead-end" circuits not being on every copy or in every dimensional cross-section worked great. Unless you were to make a model out of them, there'd be no way to know that there's a lot more going on in that cube then just an Energy Rebounder and a Subdivider." She thought about the Subdivider. "And I've seen you design better Subdividers before; yours are smart enough to preemptively subdivide if they think the situation warrants it."

"As opposed to waiting for the enemy to initiate subdivision?" By this point Lubos was grinning. Ryner was too. "Those Galra engineers had no idea what they were doing, let alone looking at. All they wanted was an Olkari made super-weapon. It wasn't that hard to slip in some extra systems into the blueprints under their noses."

"And you weren't worried about what would happen to your faction if the Galra found out?"

Lubos laughed at that. "I think all your time spent building in cellulose has dulled your brain Ryner. The Galra love their automations. Fortunately for us, they're mostly made of metal, some type of aluminum/silicon alloy, anyway... as far as raw numbers go, we weren't in trouble. The biggest problem was getting someone inside so we could know the kind of timetable the Galra in command of the operation was giving his superiors. I didn't want them thinking we could do a job that large too fast."

Ryner winced. She has seen Lubos and his team make cubes as large, if not as complex, as the super-weapon in a matter of days before the Galra came. "How long did you manage to hold out finishing it?"

"I made them think think the weapon took about a year to design and at least twice that long to build. But... the timing was getting touchy towards the end." Now Lubos looked guilty. "So we did a rush job. I hope the faster build rate didn't get out to the Garla Fleet."

Ryner really hoped Lubos was not implying what she thought he was. The Galra would not be stupid enough to leave an Olkari around enough specialty metals to get creative and Lubos was more creative then most. He probably had not handled anything radioactive in over three years and Ryner could not imagine how little gamma rays he had been getting. She had heard enough. "In that case, I'll be putting you in charge of planetary defenses. You probably have the most knowledge of Galra engineering of anyone here. I'll also be putting in a note to medical to check your gamma levels. If they're low enough, you'll probably be on the construction team for it too. In light of what your aid has told us, you'll also be forbidden from watching Rom-Coms for the the next five years." Ryner couldn't help it, she laughed as she remotely unlocked Lubos' handcuffs.

Lubos laughed with her and the tension finally left his body. He struggled to his feet and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. "Is Voltron going to be told about this?" His breathing was labored. He also looked more like the king he used to be before the Galra came.

Ryner tossed him a cube of radium which he started fingering and his breathing rate leveled out. "No. Nobody knows what they know about the status quo of the Galra Empire or why the Lions haven't been seen since the fall of Altea." She huffed in annoyance. "Until we can sort out the variables they bring into the current system, I don't see any reason to tell them more then they already know."

"Good." The finality in Lubos' tone surprised Ryner. "The Alteans don't need to know what you've managed to apply fractal geometry to and I've got reason to believe that Votron isn't necessarily fighting against the Galra."

Ryner eyed the cell. She and Lubos were starting to talk about things they should be discussing in private as heads of their respective factions. "We'll talk about this later?"

He followed her eyes and sharply nodded in agreement. "Later." 

Ryner opened the door of the cell and turned back to look at Lubos. "One last thing. Do I want to know what the super-weapon was supposed to do once the ship it was on left orbit?"

Lubos' face grew hard and he laughed. It was the laugh of someone who had followed though on an ugly decision and learned to live with it. "You don't want to know," he said as he pushed off the wall and existed the cell. He was still fingering the radium cube.

Ryner nodded and followed him out. She had a city to rebuild and he had planetary defenses to arm. The next time the Galra come to Olkarion, they would not return to the Galra Fleets. Not without a lethal payload anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> My headcanon is that the way the Olkari are manipulating metal is via controlled ionized radiation. Not being around large quantities of it makes them nervous. Their ability to to mess around with isotopes starts to fall off around the Metalloids. Radium is one of the lighter radioactive elements that has a long enough half-life to actually be found in nature in usable quantities (not that you'd want to use it for anything). It's also got a cool name.
> 
> Fractal geometry deals with geometric patterns that are self-similar (they look the same no matter what the zoom level is). They appear all over nature (lightning bolts, trees, crystals, romanesco broccoli, etc.) but nobody was aware math could ever be involved until computers were invented. Ryner's been playing around with this for a while. The Alteans not liking what she's been doing with is a reference to the world-building from [Castle of Glass](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9675899) by [mademoisellePlume](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mademoisellePlume) and [Demenior](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Demenior). So are a few other things mentioned...


End file.
